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Raspberry PI Breaks Record
Sinclair ZX80 and runaway success story, the Raspberry Pi might be about to get its own monitor after a Kickstarter campaign to create a low cost 9in screen for it has exceeded its $90,000 goal in a single weekend.
The HDMIPi monitor from startup Raspi.tv presently stands at $100,996 on Kickstarter, an increase of $8,000 in just the last four hours. The concept behind the monitor is to create something small and affordable but with maximum 1920×1080 resolution. Even though the project has had to scale down its ambitions to 1200×800 resolution to fit the business plan, Raspberry Pi fans have flocked to crowdfund the device.
Put in perspective, that’s higher than HD 720p resolution, or as they describe it, “slightly better resolution than the 720p HD footage on BBC iPlayer”.
Monitor cases will be available in a variety of colours, designed by none other than Paul Beech, who designed the original Raspberry Pi logo.
Although primarily designed for the Raspberry Pi, the HDMIPi is a standard HDMI monitor and can be used for other devices – Android sticks, video cameras, games consoles and beyond.
Raspi.tv has pledged to ship orders in February 2014, delays permitting, and is already working on enhancements. It has described touch functionality as something that might become available as a bolt-on at a later date, saying that “enough people have mentioned it that we are sitting up and taking notice”.
As ever with the Raspberry Pi ecosystem, everything is a bit Ryanair, and power supplies, surrounds and so on are not automatically included, though of course, in the true DIY spirit, you can always make your own.
Raspberry Pi Gets A Store
Raspberry Pi Foundation has opened a store to enable users to easily download applications that run on the credit-card sized computer.
The Raspberry Pi Foundation said it partnered with Indiecity and Velocix to create a store for applications that run on the Raspberry Pi computer. The Foundation said that the store itself is an application that runs under its Raspbian Linux distribution and at launch has 23 applications available for download.
The Raspberry Pi Store contains games such as Freeciv alongside applications such as Libreoffice and Asterisk. The Raspberry Pi Foundation said its store accepts compiled binaries, Python code, images, audio and video.
The Raspberry Pi Store will allow developers to charge for applications, with the Foundation saying that it hopes to see a mix of hobbyist and commercial software. The Foundation also asked users that download applications to review them in order to improve the results put out by its recommendations system.
While the Raspberry Pi was initially intended to help teach people how to program, the device has gained wider popularity due to the fact that its hardware can run many typical PC desktop applications. The Foundation’s Raspberry Pi Store will make it easier for users to find and install applications on the device, which can only be a good thing for the Raspberry Pi Foundation and Linux adoption.
Intel Previews Android Tablet On Atom Chip
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For the first time on Tuesday, Intel unveiled working prototypes of tablets computers with Google’s Android OS and the chip maker’s upcoming Atom low-power chip, code-named Medfield.
The tablet was about 8.9 millimeters (0.3 inches) thick and had a 10.1-inch screen, and was on display during a briefing at the Intel Developer Forum being held in San Francisco. The tablets ran on Android 3.0, code-named Honeycomb, and alpha software developed jointly by Google and Intel.
Earlier on Tuesday, Intel and Google announced they would ally on developing future releases of Android for smartphones and tablets. Intel CEO Paul Otellini showed off a Medfield smartphone running on Android 2.3, code-named Gingerbread.
The Medfield tablet is a reference design for device makers who want to launch tablets, said Steve Smith, vice president at Intel. Smith didn’t say when Medfield tablets would be released, but said Intel is currently optimizing the chips for tablets to balance power and performance.
Intel is banking on Medfield tablets to prove it is improving on power consumption with its tablet and smartphone chips.
Intel already offers tablet chips code-named Oak Trail and Moorestown, which haven’t been successful. Only a few companies such as Cisco and Fujitsu have adopted the chips for business tablets.
Sprint To Be The First To Offer Galaxy S II
September 4, 2011 by admin
Filed under Smartphones
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Sprint will be the first U.S. mobile carrier to offer Samsung’s Galaxy S II, starting Sept. 16, but T-Mobile and AT&T said Tuesday they also will sell the phone.
A follow-on to the popular Galaxy S, the phone will be the thinnest available at all three operators.
The largest mobile carrier in the U.S., Verizon Wireless, notably has decided not to sell the phone. Verizon recently said it already has an extensive portfolio of Android phones and so would not offer the Galaxy S II.
All models of the Galaxy S II will work on the 4G networks of the respective operators and will run Android 2.3, or Gingerbread. The phone will have a 4.3-inch Super Amoled Plus display, which uses technology developed by Samsung. It will have an 8-megapixel rear camera, plus a 2-megapixel front-facing camera for video conferencing.
TI Chip Goes 1080p On Android Devices
Texas Instruments on Tuesday said its OMAP chip had been certified to unlock full 1080p movies from Netflix for Google’s Android 2.3 based devices, which includes smartphones and tablets.
TI’s on-chip security feature, called M-Shield, will be able to decode 1080p high-definition movie streaming from Netflix, stated Fred Cohen, director of the OMAP user experience team at TI. A security layer unlocks the encoded video, which can then be viewed on smartphones and tablets or TV sets connected through an HDMI (high-definition multimedia interface) port.
The purpose of having this technology is to provide end-to-end security for protected video content, Cohen said. Movie studios are making more high-definition 1080p content available and are adamant about protecting their product, which are considered premium content.
The on-chip feature minimizes the ability to copy content, as it is easy to take control of a rooted Android device, Cohen said. It’s easy for users to access memory where the stream is temporarily stored, and then write the movie to another device.
“You have to protect those devices,” Cohen said. “We have implemented a firewall.”
TI’s security technology is to provide a security layer so devices get access to high-definition movies, Cohen said.
Netflix provides different levels of security certification depending on features such as the video quality and resolution, Cohen said. Netflix did not return a request for comment on whether it was streaming 1080p video content to mobile devices, or whether chip makers required certification to unlock secure 1080p content.
10-Inch Tablets For $299?
June 5, 2011 by admin
Filed under Around The Net
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Taiwan’s Micro-Star International unveiled two new Android-based tablets at Computex this week that appear much sleeker than the WindPad tablets it has manufactured in the past.
The WindPad Enjoy 10 and Enjoy 7, which are being shown in a location further away from the show floor, will start shipping to retailers at the end of July, priced at $299 for the 10-inch version and $199 for the 7-inch version, said MSI product manager Rory Chen.
The tablets on show here were running the 2.3 Gingerbread version of Android. MSI hopes to start using the 3.0 Honeycomb Android OS on the tablets later this year, but it’s unlikely to be available with the first devices that go on sale.
The Enjoy 10 isn’t as thin and light as the iPad 2, and a spec sheet shows the new tablets have no 3G option — only Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. It’s also behind the iPad in other areas such as memory and storage. But the Enjoy 10′s $299 price tag makes it considerably cheaper than Apple’s tablet, which starts at $499 for the Wi-Fi-only model.
NFC Support Coming to Windows Phone 7
April 3, 2011 by admin
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Microsoft is adding support for NFC (near field communication) to its Windows Phone mobile operating system, according to a report on Bloomberg Businessweek. NFC technology is a key component to the upcoming mobile payment and mobile wallet systems now reportedly under development at Google, RIM and Apple as well as the new carrier-led initiative Isis, a coalition of three of the four major cellular providers here in the U.S.
Support for NFC technology in Windows Phone 7 will be pushed out in an update to Microsoft’s mobile operating system, sources told Bloomberg reporters. Those updates may arrive sometime this year.
Bloomberg says that the addition of NFC is an effort to close the gap between Microsoft and Google, the latter which is currently the leading smartphone platform here in the U.S., and, according to at least one analyst firm, worldwide.
Google’s Android mobile operating system added in NFC support in the release code-named Gingerbread (Android 2.3) and has incrementally added new capabilities since then to broaden its feature set. In February 2011, for example, an update delivered the ability to both read and write to standard NFC tags, whereas before the NFC support was read-only.